Call Us Olympians: Even More Alaska Wrestling Stories

By Steve Wolfe

Call Us OLYMPIANS is more than just more wrestling stories. It’ wonderfully entertaining stories of life in Homer, Alaska. Sure, many of the stories center on wrestling, but Call Us Olympians overflows with short, poignant stories of life in a small town in Alaska. The reader is drawn in as Wolfe tells the stories from building a high school wrestling program to a 30-year coaching career, and finally, coaching at the Olympics—all told with spirit and humor —Steve finds humor and fun in just about every situation. Like Steve’s other two books, Call Me Coach and Call Us Champions, these tales will warm your heart, make you laugh, and have you asking for more. You don’t have to be a wrestling fan, know anything about Alaska, or even enjoy sports to absolutely love the Call Us Olympians stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Release date: Jul 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781594332432

Steve Wolfe

Steve graduated from Brigham Young University and received his Masters from Alaska Pacific University. He has been an active teacher and coach for more than 30 years. He is a member of the Homer High School Wrestling Hall-Of-Fame, and the Alaska State Wrestling Hall-Of-Fame. At the age of 56 he continues to wrestle competitively. In 1991 he won his 9th consecutive State Championship in the Open Division and won the National Championship in Las Vegas for his age and weight. Although he is retired from teaching, and no longer coaches at Homer High School, he continues to lend his support to wresting by coaching the students at a local Russian village, Voznesenka, at Anchor Point Jr. High, and is President and Coach of Popeye Wrestling Club. Steve and his lovely wife, Nina, are the parents of seven children and one foster son. All are alive, healthy, and happy.

Book preview

‘Gang’!

Chapter 1

Steve, I want you to take the assistant wrestling coach position that is opening up this year. It was Bob McLuen speaking. He was assistant principal and had been in that position for a couple of years. Before that he had been athletic director right after Darrell White had moved to Washington and at the time I had been suspended as head coach. The wrestling program since you left has been awful. We have not won a tournament or even a dual match since you were head coach. We have eight to twelve guys who try out for wrestling. That is a far cry from the forty-plus kids you had involved in wrestling. We have to do something about it.

Bob, you were the athletic director when I was fired. And you were the one who banned me from the wrestling room, I answered.

I know, but that was mostly Diver. He had a thing for you. But he is not here anymore and I have to admit that it was a mistake to let you go. We went from one of the best wrestling teams in the state to one of the worst. Last season we didn’t even qualify one wrestler for the state tournament.

I don’t know. Won’t it be stepping on Pat’s toes with me coming back as an assistant coach? I asked.

I don’t care, Bob answered. Pat has had his chance and now it’s time to get the program back on track and you know how to do it. If you come in as assistant coach for a couple years, I will make sure you are the head coach after that. But we want you to do everything you can to get things going in wrestling again.

So I began another stint as coach at Homer High, this time as assistant coach. My mind wandered back 8 years to how I lost the position as head coach.

Eric Harris had been hired as Homer’s football coach in 1989. He was someone I admired. I had worked with him in junior high and in the Mariner Football Club, and I knew that he would do a good job and that the kids would like him. I was happy to work as his assistant coach.

I was able to help him out a little preseason. Marve Roberson, my old trainer from college, had heard about the great fishing in Homer, contacted me and wanted to come up and go fishing. He was bringing the college defensive football coach with him. At that time my alma mater was nationally ranked. Having such a high-profile coach in town was a great opportunity for the local football coaches.

Homer High School even had a boat. Someone had donated a fully functional 26-foot aluminum boat to the high school. It could be used for any school function. A football coaches meeting was deemed a school function, so we took Coach Schmidt and Marve out for a fishing trip. We caught only small, 20 to 30 pound halibut, but we had fun and Coach Harris gleaned as much as he could from Coach Schmidt. Marve gave us a clinic on taping various football injuries. Marve was a world-renowned trainer. He was regularly hired as a trainer for the Olympics, usually by some Scandinavian team.

I felt the school year 1989-1990 was going to be fun for me. I would have two of my children in high school. Ivan would be a sophomore, and Rebekah would be a freshman. I might even have them as students. It turned out that from this year until the year 2001, two or more of my children would be in high school. All of them were at one time or another among my students.

Football started, and at once I saw a problem. Eric had hired Mike Rawls as an assistant coach. Mike had been the head coach a few years before but had resigned when he became assistant principal. He felt that the assistant principal’s job would require too much of his time to continue his coaching. After two years of doing the job he must have changed his mind, because now he was back coaching. His resume was impressive. His knowledge of the game was impressive. His personality was impressive. Soon Eric was letting him make most of the decisions for the team, and the biggest mistake of all was that he allowed him to give the end-of-practice pep talk. What I was afraid of happened—he talked the team to death. This is a hard thing to do, but anyone who knew Mike Rawls knew that he could do it, and he did.

I was very frustrated during the first part of the football season. It seemed that I had nothing to do. The most frustrating thing that can happen to an assistant coach is to have nothing to do. Practices seem long and boring and any win or loss is not instructive or rewarding to you, because you realize that you had nothing to do with it.

A smart head coach recognizes and uses the talents and interests of his assistant coaches. He gives them responsibilities, full power over those responsibilities, time to carry out the responsibilities, and he requires an accounting of what is being done. If things have to be changed or the responsibilities are not being carried out as they should, a smart head coach privately discusses the matter with the assistant coach and then lets him know that he expects him to make the necessary adjustments. Under these circumstances an assistant coach feels that he is needed and that he is valuable to the team. When there is a win he can take credit for his contributions, and when there is a loss he will feel that he must do his part to turn things around.

Eric was inexperienced as a head coach, and he allowed Mike Rawls’s experience and strong personality to dominate the coaching staff. He didn’t delegate much of anything to the rest of us. I was allowed to do almost nothing in practice except fetching the occasional football. Thankfully, after four weeks I was put in charge of the JV team. Now I had something useful to do, and it would be doubly fun because my son Ivan was a JV lineman.

That year was a rebuilding year for the varsity. They lost all their games except their game against Nikiski. The JV team did well. After winning three games, I told them that if they would remain undefeated all season, I would shave my beard. I had an ample but nicely shaped beard at the time. In truth I wanted to shave it because it was showing some grey, but I didn’t tell them that. They almost did it. However, Soldotna dropped down several of their varsity players to the JV and beat us by a few points. I told the guys that everyone should be allowed one mistake. If they won the last two games they could still make me shave my beard. They did, and I am clean shaven to this day. The highlight of the season was a scrimmage with the Homer varsity. The JV team won that also. Most of the JV’s played varsity the next year.

Shawn Rice was our running back. For a freshman he was big. He was 175 pounds and fairly fast. It was the first time that we had had a fairly fast runner at Homer. The varsity coaches had not found out how fast he was, so we had him on the JV team. This was his first year of football, so he was still learning the game. He broke open a long run against Kenai, ran 20 yards ahead of everyone and passed the 10-yard line. Thinking the 10-yard line was the goal, he stopped, very politely set the ball on the ground and stepped back. His face quickly changed from triumph to wonderment when all of the Kenai boys jumped on the ball. It took Shawn a minute to realize that he’d turned a touchdown into a turnover by not knowing where the goal line was.

Fortunately that play did not significantly affect the score of the game. The Homer JVs easily beat Kenai. In fact, during the very next offensive series for Homer, Shawn again broke loose and ran nearly the length of the field. When he crossed the goal line he kept running until he made it to the track. He was taking no chances about where the goal line was this time.

Chapter 2

Money had always been a concern in athletic programs. We hit on a possibility to earn money for the wrestling team this year. Since we couldn’t cut firewood, we would sell ice cream. We bought a freezer with wrestling funds, made arrangements for ice cream delivery and began to sell ice cream bars and sandwiches. We did pretty well selling the ice cream at lunch and at football and basketball games. Sometimes we even made a hundred dollars a week. We had only one problem with selling ice cream.

Coach, we’re seven dollars short again today, Chris Perk, the wrestling team member who was our treasurer, reported.

I can’t understand it. We always lose that much every day. Are we doing something wrong in our calculations? I asked.

No, I’ve gone over and over our figures. We’re counting right. And it’s always seven dollars that we’re missing, Chris replied.

The only connection I can think of is that Haagen-dazs bars cost three fifty. Maybe we’re missing two Haagen-dazs bars. Let’s keep a strict accounting of our Haagen-dazs bars tomorrow.

The next day.

We’re seven dollars short again. We sold twelve Haagen-dazs bars but fourteen are missing. Coach, I made sure that no one took any. I’m sure that when we put the ice cream away they were all there, but this morning there are two missing, Chris reported.

The freezer is locked up in my office all night; no one can get in there but me, the superintendent, the principal and the two nighttime janitors. I didn’t take any, so I wonder who took them," I mused.

The two janitors? guessed Chris.

You think? Of course, the superintendent might be driving down from Soldotna every night and having an ice cream party with Principal Diver. Haagen-dazs bars are pretty good. We put a lock on the freezer door and saved seven dollars a day. I guess the night custodians had to settle for a coffee break now that they no longer got their Haagen-dazs break at the wrestling team’s expense. But then maybe it was Superintendent Sandal and Principal Diver that were missing out on the pilfered ice cream.

I finished my first book and sent it to the publisher. I called it Wolfe’s Wrestling Rules Concordance. The wrestling rules book is the bible of wrestling rules, and whatever it says goes a long way towards deciding what should be called in every situation from points scored to illegal moves. Often a coach or referee can quote the rule, but they can’t find it in the rule book to prove their point. Wolfe’s Concordance was an every-word index to the high school wrestling rules book. My book made it easy to find rules quickly.

I found a publisher in Nebraska, but after I sent it in, they decided that it was too late in the year. It was finally published in 1990 and sold several thousand copies, but it wasn’t a great seller. I discovered that marketing wrestling products was a challenge. I later self-published my concordance and advertised it on the Internet. I make a few hundred dollars each year on it. Those that buy it love it. I love it and carry it with me everywhere. It’s a nice tool for coaches. It’s also a nice tool for referees studying the rules and preparing for refereeing. However, I don’t think that I’ll ever get rich selling it.

Chapter 3

The girls cross-country running team from Homer had won their third consecutive state championship. I noticed that Donny Diver was coaching, and that Al Poindexter, who had developed the girls into the champions they were, wasn’t coaching them. It was a while after their season ended before I was able to talk to Al about it. I wanted him to be an assistant wrestling coach again. With Darrell White gone we had an opening.

Why didn’t you coach the cross-country team this year? I asked.

Diver took it away from me, he answered. I came back from a family vacation to the Lower-48 a week before practice started, and found out that he’d assigned himself head coach. He asked me if I wanted to be his assistant.

That was pretty forward of him, I said. Did he give a reason?

He said that the girls were getting anxious to start, and he didn’t know when I was coming back so he just took over and started practicing with them.

A week early? I asked.

Two weeks early.

That’s against Alaska State high school rules. I said.

They didn’t have ‘official’ practices; they just got together and ran for ‘recreation.’ But it doesn’t matter, he was the head coach.

Can’t you go to the school board about it? I asked.

I could, but he’s also the principal. He can do darn well what he wants as far as coaches are concerned, and the school board will back him up.

That’s just wrong. Were you his assistant coach then? I asked.

No, I walked away. He got back at me, however. He assigned me away from PE, and now I’m doing shop. I’ve never taught shop before. I’m spending hours after school catching up and staying ahead of the kids. I’ve got no time for anything else.

Too bad, I lamented. With Darrell gone there’s an assistant wrestling coach position open. I was hoping you could step in there. I think you’ve always been the best conditioning coach in the state.

Steve, I would like to, but I just can’t commit right now. Ask me when wrestling season is closer. I may be caught up by then, but right now I’m swamped, and I have no one to help me. Let me give you an example. Diver said he would help me get a robotics class going with our two new robots. Everyone in Central Office thinks he’s an expert on the subject. I’ve asked and asked for help, and finally he came over to my classroom after school. He spent about five minutes there, but that was long enough for me to see that he knew even less about robots than I did. He finally left after telling me to just read the manual. Like I hadn’t done that already. I saw him a few minutes later helping coach the boy’s basketball team.

He’s not an assistant basketball coach is he? I asked, knowing who the head coach was.

He thinks that he’s the head coach. I guess basketball is just more important than my robotics class.

Al did join us as an assistant wrestling coach. His son, Chad, was wrestling so he said he had to stay for practices anyway. We were really glad Chad had joined.

Chapter 4

The Grand Experiment continued. I had dubbed the new class schedule The Grand Experiment; it was just slightly more successful than the French Revolution. It seemed that every year we changed the number of periods in the day and the length of each period was. This year, we had seven periods, four on Monday and Wednesday, three on Tuesday and Thursday, and seven short periods on Friday. This was at least predictable. We could figure out when to have guest speakers and so forth. Many teachers wanted longer class periods for classes such as chemistry and biology so that they would have time to do extensive labs. Other teachers felt that shorter classes were just right. For the past several years we had experimented with several different schedules. One year we had seven periods of short 50-minute classes. The next year we had four periods a day of 110 minutes each and alternate classes every other day. That was horrific. Because there is an odd number of days in the week, each week one class would be held three times a week, and the next week only two times a week. Students and teachers were always confused as to what class they were to go to for how many times on what day. Figuring out the schedule for several weeks in a row was a hassle. Getting guest speakers to come in on two different days was almost impossible.

This new schedule seemed much better. For me it didn’t matter much during this nightmarish year. I had been moved from teaching Spanish to teaching pre-algebra.

When I went to high school, you took algebra as a freshman if you were college bound and basic math if you were not. However, at the present time someone had decided that all kids needed algebra, and he or she had written an article about it that everyone believed. So now all students had to take algebra. Those who were probably not going to catch on to algebra as freshmen would take pre-algebra which was a watered-down version of the real thing.

I loved algebra in high school and in college, so I was excited at the prospect of teaching it. I wanted to give every kid the opportunity to solve the wonderful world of numbers called algebra.

Unfortunately, my students weren’t nearly as excited about this magical world as I was. After a few weeks of struggling I found out that all of my pre-algebra classes were made up of kids who were plenty smart, but who were just too lazy to put the effort into learning anything and a few kids who were a little slow in learning, but who really wanted to learn as much as they could. It was a hard row to hoe, but being the ultimate optimist that I am, I kept pushing for results.

These students presented me with a challenge. In one class there were two girls who talked incessantly. They apparently didn’t understand that there was a proper time to talk and a proper time to be quiet. It didn’t matter if people were listening to them or even if they wanted to listen. They were just compelled to talk. When I interrupted class to discipline them for talking they would begin talking to someone else as if I wasn’t even in the same country. I tried every trick I had learned in 20 years of teaching to curb their incessant chatter, all to no avail. In a final effort to keep them from disturbing class, I moved them into the hallway with my door open. It made it possible for me to teach the lesson and for the students to actually work on their math assignments, but those two girls talked incessantly in the hallway as well. After several weeks I had to bring them back into the classroom when several other teachers complained that they were disturbing their classes whenever they had their doors open. I was always amazed that two people could talk that long when no one was listening. They were obvious geniuses in the skills of communication, but their algebra grades suffered significantly.

I tried to help them do their work, but they were geniuses in stalling as well. I could stand over them and try to get their minds on the problem at hand, but this was only an opportunity to talk to me. I don’t believe that either of them ever did a single problem all year. If I spent too much time with them, I would have 20 other students rioting behind my back and three to five students who really wanted some help languishing with no teacher available to help them. I was definitely outnumbered. I seriously considered retiring that year. I’m glad that I didn’t. The next ten years of teaching turned out to be the most rewarding teaching years ever. But that year was a challenge.

James, you can’t jump over the desks. I scolded I needed to talk to Bill. He answered.

"Number one: you didn’t need to talk to Bill. You wanted to talk Bill. You should have stayed in your desk and talked to him after class. Number two: getting out of your desk when I am explaining the assignment to the class is inappropriate. Number three: there’s never a time when it’s appropriate to jump over a number of desks to talk to anyone."

I need to talk to Bill, James retorted and walked toward Bill’s desk.

No, James, go to your desk and sit down now!

I need to talk to Bill.

What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand? Sit down.

Another day: I need to go to the bathroom, Mr. Wolfe, Frank said.

No, Frank, the last time I let you go to the bathroom you were gone for half an hour. I had to call the office, and the vice principal found you wandering the hallways. You have lost your bathroom privileges.

But I really have to go. I’ll pee my pants if you don’t let me, he said.

Sorry, Frank you’ll have to hold it.

But I really gotta’ go.

I ignored him and went on with class. Five minutes later.

Mr. Wolfe, I-have-got-to-go-to-the-bathroom, please. He pleaded as if he were in terrible pain.

No. I answered resolutely.

Let him go, Mr. Wolfe. He looks like he’s dying, another student pleaded.

No. Few people have died from not peeing. I stuck to my guns.

Ten minutes later. I’m going to make a mess all over this chair, Mr. Wolfe. Can I please go?

No.

Five minutes later Frank was hopping up and down and squirming in his chair. I’ve got to go, he screamed.

No, don’t ask again. For the next 20 minutes Frank kept up the squirming and groaning. I was really beginning to feel like I’d damaged the kid’s bladder for life. The bell rang, and he sprinted for the doorway. I watched out of the door as he ran a few steps, then stopped and began talking to a group of girls during the ten minute break. He never did go to the bathroom during the break. Maybe he did during the next class.

Nearly all of the students in my pre-algebra class were of such a mind-set, but some turned out okay. Ten years later I was in the Fritz Creek General Store and in walked Frank. He was glad to see me. He introduced me to his wife, showed off his baby boy and explained that he was the new pain therapist in town. He had gone through intensive medical training to learn how to help people deal with and overcome pain.

Mr. Wolfe,’ he said, I know I gave you a lot of grief in algebra. I gave all my teachers a lot of grief, but I appreciate that you kept making me do what I was supposed to do. Your instructions and especially your discipline helped me go through eight years of college. I learned that I could